Girion47: I disagree. I eat about 1200 - 1400 calories a day. I never feel starved.

Write back when you're in your 40s and still want to have enough energy to bang and maybe hop on a bike sometimes.

Drop out rates of people on caloric restriction diets are HUGE. Good luck to you though.

The Angry Hand of God: cowsspinach: Flakeloaf: Give me a break. I didn't see the bison until I'd already shot a deer and three squirrels. It's not my fault I can only carry 100 pounds of food back to the wagon!

You redneck.

Be nice, his family died fording a river.

I'm hung over and that statment had me LOLing.



/thank you

coombes: Think about a Thanksgiving turkey. That immense 22lb turkey has about 11lb of edible meat. Does that mean 50% of the food is thrown out? That is what this "study" says.

It also says that food we export, because we do not eat it ourselves, is "missing" and so must have been "thrown away."

Lies, damned lies, and statistics...

Yep, spot on. Excellent example. Don't eat the pope's nose or the giblets? The article says you're a food waster!

OH NOES!!! Capitalism has effectively solved the problem of starvation, one of humankind's oldest, deadliest and most intractable problems!!! Clearly, this is evil, and must be stopped before it spreads to other countries.

/This message brought to you by Zimbabwe, Cuba, and North Korea
//Where there are no fat chicks
///Probably why the UC Berkeley kids want their system

The only food that gets wasted in my house is the ocassional bag of salad greens. You're lucky to get 2 days out of that stuff.

Katie98_KT: tea doesn't have any calories.

Fail.

http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-tea-i14355

Smackledorfer: sboyle1020: So...what I said was correct? Don't know about you, but I don't see infants downing slices of pizza.

Think about it:

1. spores grow.
2. They produce toxins.
3. Recook the food and leave the spores but kill the toxins.
4. How long do you think it takes the spores to crank out toxins now?
5. Wait that time, re-cook the food again?
6. Uh oh, more spores than ever now and increased toxin production.

1. you can't "kill" toxins, you can neutralize them
(60 degrees C)
2. Those spores may turn into bacteria, but unless you vacuum seal that pizza, they aren't doing shiat.

"Food-borne botulism usually results from ingestion of food that has become contaminated with spores (such as a perforated can) in an anaerobic environment, allowing the spores to germinate and grow. The growing (vegetative) bacteria produce toxin. It is the ingestion of preformed toxin that causes botulism, not the ingestion of the spores or the vegetative bacteria."

Anaerobic btw, means lacking oxygen. Since ambient air is about 19% O2, Botulinum does terrible when sitting on an open counter.

sboyle1020: I was just giving an example of their waste. And you wouldn't know how long it's been sitting out, they heat it up regardless.

sboyle1020: They have a rule that if a pizza sits out for more than an hour they have to throw it away and make a new one.

What ARE you talking about here?

You mentioned a company that won't sell 1 hour old pizza. You didn't say why they do it. They MIGHT not do it because of botulism or other health concerns, but according to you they should just rebake it at 500 degrees. Also, according to you, no one would have any idea how long the pizza was sitting out, so they obviously aren't doing quality control on this pizza for the customer right?

So in your opinion, the business is run by fools who really ought to be selling inferior products to their customers, because the customers are too stupid to know a good pizza from a bad one?

What world do you live in where you think the average business, especially a competitive one like the restaurant industry, could remain full of successfully incompetent managers who needlessly throw profits away?

There are 2 reasons, and only 2 reasons, why a restaurant will deliberately throw away food: 1. They could get in trouble if they sold it. 2. The customer wouldn't accept it. There is no 3. The manager just feels like throwing money away.

Yea, you just brought it up to give an example of waste, but I'm pointing out that any waste on the restaurants part is either a bad business decision, or a necessary cost of doing business. Selling pizza by the slice requires pizza ready when people come in, but there are still some standards of quality, both health and taste, that those slices must meet. The store selling the pizza by the slice is not to blame. The consumer who demands quality pizza available by the slice is to blame, and the existence of food in such quantities as to be cheap enough to afford that loss is to blame for the loss (but that doesn't mean cheap food is a bad thing either).

Smackledorfer: sboyle1020: So...what I said was correct? Don't know about you, but I don't see infants downing slices of pizza.

Think about it:

1. spores grow.
2. They produce toxins.
3. Recook the food and leave the spores but kill the toxins.
4. How long do you think it takes the spores to crank out toxins now?
5. Wait that time, re-cook the food again?
6. Uh oh, more spores than ever now and increased toxin production.

What you posted clearly stated the spores aren't dangerous to anyone but infants and cannot produce toxins due to the natural acids in our digestive system.

/are we really discussing botulism?
//why am I at work?

newaddict: subby's math is terrible

30 million in US x 40% = 120 million

Rotsky - is that a new pet peeve ?

OMFG - what happened to the other 274 odd million ?!?!?

Katie98_KT: tea doesn't have any calories.

It might if you measure it in a calorimeter. Insoluble fiber has no calories either, but is measured at between 5 and 12 calories per gram on average (so if you are hardcore calorie counting you can subtract about 7 calories per gram of fiber going by the label).

GORDON: I just wish you could buy half-loaves/packages of bread, hotdog buns, and hamburger buns. That is the majority of the food I do not consume before it goes moldy.

Bingo. The suburban American model of "must buy a week to two weeks worth of food at a time at the supermarket with the huge parking lot on the edge of town" coupled with busy or erratic work schedules leads to a lot of it.

If you can shop every day and buy small amounts of whatever it is on the way home as you're going to make the food, you don't overbuy.

With meat, you can freeze stuff, potatoes last pretty well if stored dry, noodles/pasta/rice/beans don't go off, and canned goods last for years. But the bread and fresh vegetables will go off, you can't really buy them too far in advance. Super-frugal households in the middle of nowhere usually (1) bake their own bread (because the FLOUR will keep), (2) eat a lot of CANNED vegetables (which are cheap and keep), and (3) have a garden.

FWIW they've done studies on food waste back in the 1970's too, digging through garbage in landfills that's amazingly well preserved, and they find that in times of economic uncertainty there is MORE household waste - because people are hoarding, and hoarding doesn't work well with a lot of types of food.

They're more than welcome to have all the food I throw away, but I'm pretty sure that eating it will kill them faster than not eating it. It has to be pretty disgusting before I toss it.

sboyle1020: Smackledorfer: sboyle1020: So...what I said was correct? Don't know about you, but I don't see infants downing slices of pizza.

Think about it:

1. spores grow.
2. They produce toxins.
3. Recook the food and leave the spores but kill the toxins.
4. How long do you think it takes the spores to crank out toxins now?
5. Wait that time, re-cook the food again?
6. Uh oh, more spores than ever now and increased toxin production.

What you posted clearly stated the spores aren't dangerous to anyone but infants and cannot produce toxins due to the natural acids in our digestive system.

/are we really discussing botulism?
//why am I at work?

I used to inspect restaurants for a health department, and I really enjoyed my microbiology class, so for me this is geek fun.

If I had a religion, wasting food would be against it.

dan_in_oakland: OH NOES!!! Capitalism has effectively solved the problem of starvation, one of humankind's oldest, deadliest and most intractable problems!!! Clearly, this is evil, and must be stopped before it spreads to other countries.

While I would say that the food industry is a great place to let market forces decide prices, you can't really say capitalism solved this problem when it is really a result of the following:
1. How great the land in teh USA is.
2. How much richer we are than most of the world.
3. Technology, allowing us to produce even more, as well as ship and preserve goods well.

Also, the government subsidizes the industry. I believe that makes it fall under the ebil soshulizm?

Girion47: sboyle1020: Smackledorfer: sboyle1020: So...what I said was correct? Don't know about you, but I don't see infants downing slices of pizza.

Think about it:

1. spores grow.
2. They produce toxins.
3. Recook the food and leave the spores but kill the toxins.
4. How long do you think it takes the spores to crank out toxins now?
5. Wait that time, re-cook the food again?
6. Uh oh, more spores than ever now and increased toxin production.

What you posted clearly stated the spores aren't dangerous to anyone but infants and cannot produce toxins due to the natural acids in our digestive system.

/are we really discussing botulism?
//why am I at work?

I used to inspect restaurants for a health department, and I really enjoyed my microbiology class, so for me this is geek fun.

Ha, well I hadn't even heard the word Botulism in the past 5 years, let alone have a discussion about it in regards to hour old pizza.

itazurakko: FWIW they've done studies on food waste back in the 1970's too, digging through garbage in landfills that's amazingly well preserved, and they find that in times of economic uncertainty there is MORE household waste - because people are hoarding, and hoarding doesn't work well with a lot of types of food.

With stores like costco and sam's club these days though, it's even easier for people to hoard, and think they're being frugal and getting a good deal by buying that huge box of (insert item you love but will quickly learn to hate here)

Wow. Somebody did a study on this. Must be true.

Go do a Google News search for "New Study". If you like this kind of shiat, you're gonna love those results!

chu2dogg: The world is alot more complex than you think, kid

When I was kid, I was told to eat all of my food because some kids in Panama had to pick through garbage piles to find food. You know the usual "think of the starving kids!" thing.

My five year old mind would think about this, and never understand it, it made no sense - surely I SHOULD throw away my food, so that those kids could FIND it?

The entire concept of different waste streams completely escaped me.

/mind, for other reasons I still think the general "he has no X, you have X, there is no way to transfer the X but you have to use yours to the absolute fullest or else it's unfair to him" makes no sense

miscreant: itazurakko: FWIW they've done studies on food waste back in the 1970's too, digging through garbage in landfills that's amazingly well preserved, and they find that in times of economic uncertainty there is MORE household waste - because people are hoarding, and hoarding doesn't work well with a lot of types of food.

With stores like costco and sam's club these days though, it's even easier for people to hoard, and think they're being frugal and getting a good deal by buying that huge box of (insert item you love but will quickly learn to hate here)

I think it's ok for condiments. I love enormous containers of ketchup.

Being 100% honest, I throw away *at least* 50% of the food I purchase.

It's not that I enjoy being wasteful, it's just that food manufactures/grocery stores don't really cater to the guy who is buying food for himself.

I want *one* chicken breast; but the best I can do is to buy a pack of three. I want 1/3 of a pound of ground beef, but again, I'm lucky if I can find 'one pound'.

Things that are perishable simply don't last around here. The few times I try cook something that isn't as simple as heating it up, I end up having to buy a handful of things in quantities that are far to large and will go bad before the next time I use it.

I buy the smallest thing of milk they sell. I might use it in two dishes through-out the week and end up throwing away more than half. I rarely eat eggs, but some recipes call for them; I buy 6, use 2, and end up with 4 eggs that rot before I use them.

I routinely throw out 5 hotdog buns because I wanted hotdogs *one* night that week.

Whatever I actually cook....I'm eating about 95% of. But a LOT of what I buy with the intent of eating simply never makes it to the table.

The Angry Hand of God 2009-11-27 11:00:56 AM
Starvation is a fantastic way to keep human population
down. Besides, do we really want the poor, sick and homeless reproducing?

Oh, I have the sniffles and so am prohibited from having any kittens?

You're a really piss poor excuse for a god. You can't even
wave Your Allegedly All Powerful Hand^TM and make
the poor go away painlessly, you like to watch them suffer
agony in starvation.

So much for your false claim of omnipotence, asshole.

Girion47: Smackledorfer: sboyle1020: So...what I said was correct? Don't know about you, but I don't see infants downing slices of pizza.

Think about it:

1. spores grow.
2. They produce toxins.
3. Recook the food and leave the spores but kill the toxins.
4. How long do you think it takes the spores to crank out toxins now?
5. Wait that time, re-cook the food again?
6. Uh oh, more spores than ever now and increased toxin production.

1. you can't "kill" toxins, you can neutralize them
(60 degrees C)
2. Those spores may turn into bacteria, but unless you vacuum seal that pizza, they aren't doing shiat.

"Food-borne botulism usually results from ingestion of food that has become contaminated with spores (such as a perforated can) in an anaerobic environment, allowing the spores to germinate and grow. The growing (vegetative) bacteria produce toxin. It is the ingestion of preformed toxin that causes botulism, not the ingestion of the spores or the vegetative bacteria."

Anaerobic btw, means lacking oxygen. Since ambient air is about 19% O2, Botulinum does terrible when sitting on an open counter.

Aside from being nitpicky about my use of the word kill, are you agreeing with me or disagreeing with my assessment of the silly claim that a business should just let pizzas rot for an hour and then rebake them repeatedly, and that this will somehow solve the botulism problem dead in its tracks for said business?

sboyle1020: What you posted clearly stated the spores aren't dangerous to anyone but infants and cannot produce toxins due to the natural acids in our digestive system.

From what was linked it says the spores produce the toxin, and that the toxin makes you sick, but that heating the food to a temperature will eliminate the toxin. It then said that the spores will survive the heat. Which means that if the place is selling pizza by the slice and has to reheat the pizza because its become full of toxins, but in doing so leaves the bacteria, there will soon be more toxins produced in the pizza when its stuck back under the warmer. Since the spores are never killed, they grow in number, and the rate at which the pizza itself will make people sick will go up over time.

Plus, for the umpteenth time: consumers don't want to buy twice-baked dry and burned crap (generally). So it doesn't even matter if its a health concern (which it is) because your solution to said health concern involves destroying any chance of selling the pizza.

Fark_Guy_Rob: Being 100% honest, I throw away *at least* 50% of the food I purchase.

It's not that I enjoy being wasteful, it's just that food manufactures/grocery stores don't really cater to the guy who is buying food for himself.

I want *one* chicken breast; but the best I can do is to buy a pack of three. I want 1/3 of a pound of ground beef, but again, I'm lucky if I can find 'one pound'.

Things that are perishable simply don't last around here. The few times I try cook something that isn't as simple as heating it up, I end up having to buy a handful of things in quantities that are far to large and will go bad before the next time I use it.

I buy the smallest thing of milk they sell. I might use it in two dishes through-out the week and end up throwing away more than half. I rarely eat eggs, but some recipes call for them; I buy 6, use 2, and end up with 4 eggs that rot before I use them.

I routinely throw out 5 hotdog buns because I wanted hotdogs *one* night that week.

Whatever I actually cook....I'm eating about 95% of. But a LOT of what I buy with the intent of eating simply never makes it to the table.

You need to find yourself a butcher to regulate your meat purchases.

Smackledorfer: Girion47: Smackledorfer: sboyle1020: So...what I said was correct? Don't know about you, but I don't see infants downing slices of pizza.

Think about it:

1. spores grow.
2. They produce toxins.
3. Recook the food and leave the spores but kill the toxins.
4. How long do you think it takes the spores to crank out toxins now?
5. Wait that time, re-cook the food again?
6. Uh oh, more spores than ever now and increased toxin production.

1. you can't "kill" toxins, you can neutralize them
(60 degrees C)
2. Those spores may turn into bacteria, but unless you vacuum seal that pizza, they aren't doing shiat.

"Food-borne botulism usually results from ingestion of food that has become contaminated with spores (such as a perforated can) in an anaerobic environment, allowing the spores to germinate and grow. The growing (vegetative) bacteria produce toxin. It is the ingestion of preformed toxin that causes botulism, not the ingestion of the spores or the vegetative bacteria."

Anaerobic btw, means lacking oxygen. Since ambient air is about 19% O2, Botulinum does terrible when sitting on an open counter.

Aside from being nitpicky about my use of the word kill, are you agreeing with me or disagreeing with my assessment of the silly claim that a business should just let pizzas rot for an hour and then rebake them repeatedly, and that this will somehow solve the botulism problem dead in its tracks for said business?

sboyle1020: What you posted clearly stated the spores aren't dangerous to anyone but infants and cannot produce toxins due to the natural acids in our digestive system.

From what was linked it says the spores produce the toxin, and that the toxin makes you sick, but that heating the food to a temperature will eliminate the toxin. It then said that the spores will survive the heat. Which means that if the place is selling pizza by the slice and has to reheat the pizza because its become full of toxins, but in doing so leaves the bacteria, there will soon be more toxins produced in the pizza when its stuck back under the warmer. Since the spores are never killed, they grow in number, and the rate at which the pizza itself will make people sick will go up over time.

Plus, for the umpteenth time: consumers don't want to buy twice-baked dry and burned crap (generally). So it doesn't even matter if its a health concern (which it is) because your solution to said health concern involves destroying any chance of selling the pizza.

Christ you're anal. All I was trying to point out was that 1 hour was slight overkill, I think it could sit out for maybe 2 hours instead of 1. And this was a grocery store, not a restaurant, for the record.

pippi longstocking: It is intentional. There is no better way to keep the masses compliant if they're ignorant and well fed...I wonder which people fit this description?

Americans! Republicans especially!

Twigz221: As individuals it's as simple as making only what you need, then using and eating leftovers. As for restaurants and hotels, it gets a lot harder thanks to lawsuits. That's a problem I can't think of a good solution to.

EAT THE LAWYERS FIRST.

sboyle1020: You need to find yourself a butcher to regulate your meat purchases.

I would have suggested a freezer myself.

Fark_Guy_Rob: I want *one* chicken breast; but the best I can do is to buy a pack of three. I want 1/3 of a pound of ground beef, but again, I'm lucky if I can find 'one pound'.

You don't eat leftovers? You can't freeze a couple chicken breasts for later consumption (you can freeze cooked or uncooked chicken and beef for a while without losing much flavor).

Also, have you tried going up to the butcher in the grocery store and asked him about buying lower quantities?

Fark_Guy_Rob: I routinely throw out 5 hotdog buns because I wanted hotdogs *one* night that week.

Freezer. That is all.

Your problem isn't that the grocery store doesn't sell things for you, your problem is that you apparently make a trip to the store for a single meal, and then throw everything out, and then make another trip for the next meal. You are wasteful.

"HA HA HA!! FAT AMERICANS!!!! EVERYONE IN EUROPE IS SO IN SHAPE AND HOT!!!!"

Um...doesn't that get a tad stale after a while?

Yogimus: I, for one, am thankful we personally starve the rest of the world into obedience.

Of course, we do export more than twice the amount of food of the second-largest food exporting nation.

cryinoutloud: it boggles my mind, and I've lived here my entire life. Today is one of the most depressing days of the year for me. If Black Friday shows what our country is about, get me the hell out of here.

I dunno. I'm more depressed by the idea that any significant number of Americans might think Black Friday "shows what our country is about," rather than it being, you know, a good day to get deals and shop. They do have those in other countries, you know.

Trustafarian: "HA HA HA!! FAT AMERICANS!!!! EVERYONE IN EUROPE IS SO IN SHAPE AND HOT!!!!"

Um...doesn't that get a tad stale after a while?

Ridiculing people who believe in and propagate myths rarely gets stale, which is what makes Fark such a wonderful place for entertainment.

Smackledorfer: Girion47: Smackledorfer: sboyle1020: So...what I said was correct? Don't know about you, but I don't see infants downing slices of pizza.

Think about it:

1. spores grow.
2. They produce toxins.
3. Recook the food and leave the spores but kill the toxins.
4. How long do you think it takes the spores to crank out toxins now?
5. Wait that time, re-cook the food again?
6. Uh oh, more spores than ever now and increased toxin production.

1. you can't "kill" toxins, you can neutralize them
(60 degrees C)
2. Those spores may turn into bacteria, but unless you vacuum seal that pizza, they aren't doing shiat.

"Food-borne botulism usually results from ingestion of food that has become contaminated with spores (such as a perforated can) in an anaerobic environment, allowing the spores to germinate and grow. The growing (vegetative) bacteria produce toxin. It is the ingestion of preformed toxin that causes botulism, not the ingestion of the spores or the vegetative bacteria."

Anaerobic btw, means lacking oxygen. Since ambient air is about 19% O2, Botulinum does terrible when sitting on an open counter.

Aside from being nitpicky about my use of the word kill, are you agreeing with me or disagreeing with my assessment of the silly claim that a business should just let pizzas rot for an hour and then rebake them repeatedly, and that this will somehow solve the botulism problem dead in its tracks for said business?

sboyle1020: What you posted clearly stated the spores aren't dangerous to anyone but infants and cannot produce toxins due to the natural acids in our digestive system.

From what was linked it says the spores produce the toxin, and that the toxin makes you sick, but that heating the food to a temperature will eliminate the toxin. It then said that the spores will survive the heat. Which means that if the place is selling pizza by the slice and has to reheat the pizza because its become full of toxins, but in doing so leaves the bacteria, there will soon be more toxins produced in the pizza when its stuck back under the warmer. Since the spores are never killed, they grow in number, and the rate at which the pizza itself will make people sick will go up over time.

Plus, for the umpteenth time: consumers don't want to buy twice-baked dry and burned crap (generally). So it doesn't even matter if its a health concern (which it is) because your solution to said health concern involves destroying any chance of selling the pizza.

I'm actually ridiculing your choice of "botulism" as the food boogey-man, I even tried to make your mistake obvious with last post. Let me try again.

BOTULISM IS ANAEROBIC, MEANING IT WILL NOT GROW IN AN OXYGENATED ENVIRONMENT, PIZZAS ARE NOT AIRTIGHT AND THEREFORE WOULD NOT ALLOW GROWTH OF BOTULISM.

Salmonella, E-coli, Hepatitis A, Shigella and Norovirus are better choices for your argument.

A lot of that is introduced via the fecal/oral route. Either the grocery/restaurant workers not washing their hands, or the illegal immigrants that picked the veggies doing their doody in the fields and going back to work.(remember the green onion scare?)

Either way, you can expect food that is friendly to bacterial growth to be unsafe if it is between 40 and 140 degrees for greater than 4 hours.....TOTAL. That means if you pull it out for 2 hours, put it back in the fridge and then pull it out again for 3 hours, you probably don't want to eat it.

Norovirus=projectile vomiting and explosive diarrhea, my favorite of the food borne illnesses.

Fark_Guy_Rob: Being 100% honest, I throw away *at least* 50% of the food I purchase.

It's not that I enjoy being wasteful, it's just that food manufactures/grocery stores don't really cater to the guy who is buying food for himself.

I want *one* chicken breast; but the best I can do is to buy a pack of three. I want 1/3 of a pound of ground beef, but again, I'm lucky if I can find 'one pound'.

Things that are perishable simply don't last around here. The few times I try cook something that isn't as simple as heating it up, I end up having to buy a handful of things in quantities that are far to large and will go bad before the next time I use it.

I buy the smallest thing of milk they sell. I might use it in two dishes through-out the week and end up throwing away more than half. I rarely eat eggs, but some recipes call for them; I buy 6, use 2, and end up with 4 eggs that rot before I use them.

I routinely throw out 5 hotdog buns because I wanted hotdogs *one* night that week.

Whatever I actually cook....I'm eating about 95% of. But a LOT of what I buy with the intent of eating simply never makes it to the table.

dude. get a freezer. get ziploc bags. put chicken breasts in bags, put in freezer.

also, I have NEVER in my LIFE heard of eggs rotting. How farking long are you storing them in your fridge? a year?
as someone mentioned earlier, you can freeze bread, but I will admit it doesn't taste as good.

sboyle1020: Ever been to a Wegman's? It's insane how much food they probably have to throw away. They make a ton of food in house, especially desserts/baked goods and pizza. They have a rule that if a pizza sits out for more than an hour they have to throw it away and make a new one. Luckily they do have an agreement with homeless shelters, etc. where they can bring day old baked goods and what not. But still, they waste entirely too much food.

I see first hand all of this as I work at one. Apples with a spot on them will get tossed...any fruit/veggie that has a blemish on it is usually tossed, this equals several boxes of food a day. Then theres the pizza and all the other prepared stuff that goes bad (you would think they would make less or lower the price to sell more, but nope..I constantly see stuff being tossed). The only thing they donate is bread and stuff, and even that isn't constantly done.

Smackledorfer: Katie98_KT: tea doesn't have any calories.

It might if you measure it in a calorimeter. Insoluble fiber has no calories either, but is measured at between 5 and 12 calories per gram on average (so if you are hardcore calorie counting you can subtract about 7 calories per gram of fiber going by the label).

yea, if you measure enough of it, you would come up with some calories. But in general, we're talking about like counting the calories from using rosemary in your cooking. its insignificant.

Oddly enough, the reason for this is actually greed, not gluttony.

sboyle1020: Christ you're anal. All I was trying to point out was that 1 hour was slight overkill, I think it could sit out for maybe 2 hours instead of 1. And this was a grocery store, not a restaurant, for the record.

I don't give a shiat whether it is a restaurant or a grocery store, the bacteria don't give a shiat, and market forces apply to the quality of the item being sold regardless of who is selling it. Oh sure, someone might want a BETTER quality of pizza from a pizzeria, but they still aren't going to buy garbage.

You are trying to make a point about waste, and your point is dead wrong, and you are trying to defend that point by going off on ridiculous tangents (responding to the mention of a health concern by claiming they should put the pizza back in a 500 degree oven? wtf) instead of just admitting you were wrong about one point. We are equally anal here.


Look, its possible that the grocery store in your example is needlessly throwing out said pizza. Maybe it wouldn't be toxic to humans until the 90 minute mark. Maybe their customer base would buy it regardless of how many times it was brought back up to the 500 degree mark. I can't speak exactly to your example. However, you are using that example as a demonstration of the waste within the system that we are, I guess, supposed to be getting up in arms about. Chances are pretty low in an industry with competition that all the businesses will be throwing money away just for fun.

Smackledorfer: Fark_Guy_Rob: I want *one* chicken breast; but the best I can do is to buy a pack of three. I want 1/3 of a pound of ground beef, but again, I'm lucky if I can find 'one pound'.

You don't eat leftovers? You can't freeze a couple chicken breasts for later consumption (you can freeze cooked or uncooked chicken and beef for a while without losing much flavor).

Also, have you tried going up to the butcher in the grocery store and asked him about buying lower quantities?

Fark_Guy_Rob: I routinely throw out 5 hotdog buns because I wanted hotdogs *one* night that week.

Freezer. That is all.

Your problem isn't that the grocery store doesn't sell things for you, your problem is that you apparently make a trip to the store for a single meal, and then throw everything out, and then make another trip for the next meal. You are wasteful.

hell, even when I shopping for 1, I went to sams club and bought meat there. OH NOES 6 POUNDS OF CHICKEN. that's like.. 12 half pound packages frozen in my freezer, which is a grand total of 24 meals!!!! if I cook chicken twice a week.. it means OMG OMG like, 3 months of chicken!!!! and it takes up a whole ft in my freezer. how will I ever survive not having to buy chicken for 3 months??

and yes, you barely lose any flavor. the only thing I will say is that if you want to make meatloaf, you have to buy fresh ground beef. it just doesn't work any other way.

que lastima: cryinoutloud: Grocery stores are responsible for a lot of waste (OK, it's not "purchased food"). when food hits its "sell-by" date, it's tossed, and it can't be reused or given away or anything. they even have people who cut open all the packages, so that when they throw out a whole case of yogurt or cheese or something, someone doesn't go through the dumpster and retrieve it.

Homeless people know about this and will come get the food anyway, but the whole practice is insane. I've seen dumpsters filled with hundreds of pounds of steaks and dairy products.

this. every time i go to the grocery store i think about how they can't possibly sell all that food before it goes bad. it's the price we pay for demanding an insane variety at the places where we do our everyday shopping. and yeah, the whole "this is being thrown out, let's ruin it to make sure no one can eat it" mentality seems crazy to me. i mean... if its in the trash anyway, what's the harm? i guess they just don't want homeless camps sprouting up in every grocery store's back parking lot.

If they toss it before it's bad, they'll lose customers to the dumpster if it's edible. Same reason meat for dogs has charcoal added to it to make it "unfit for human consuption" and sold for under a buck a lb.

chu2dogg: So much stupidity.

For one, giving mass amounts of food aid destroys prices on local food products, driving local farmers out of business, causing even more food scarcity, causing even more starvation.

The world is alot more complex than you think, kid, (uh durr.. the greedy corps. wont give dem da aid!!)

QFT. Ideally we should be giving money aid, so the money can be spent to buy a local farmer's produce, the farmer then spends that money for various stuff, and voila, an economy is born.

Obviously, that has its own problems, since money aid just gets diverted into the bank accounts of corrupt government officials.

Fark_Guy_Rob: Being 100% honest, I throw away *at least* 50% of the food I purchase.

It's not that I enjoy being wasteful, it's just that food manufactures/grocery stores don't really cater to the guy who is buying food for himself.

I want *one* chicken breast; but the best I can do is to buy a pack of three. I want 1/3 of a pound of ground beef, but again, I'm lucky if I can find 'one pound'.

Things that are perishable simply don't last around here. The few times I try cook something that isn't as simple as heating it up, I end up having to buy a handful of things in quantities that are far to large and will go bad before the next time I use it.

I buy the smallest thing of milk they sell. I might use it in two dishes through-out the week and end up throwing away more than half. I rarely eat eggs, but some recipes call for them; I buy 6, use 2, and end up with 4 eggs that rot before I use them.

I routinely throw out 5 hotdog buns because I wanted hotdogs *one* night that week.

Whatever I actually cook....I'm eating about 95% of. But a LOT of what I buy with the intent of eating simply never makes it to the table.

Like Kareeshus said, a freezer is a great solution. I'm a single girl who doesn't cook much but also doesn't throw away a lot of food. Bread will keep a lot longer if you store it in the fridge. You can freeze unused chicken breast, bread and ground beef and buy Parmalat milk which has a much longer shelf-life than regular milk and also comes in handy little containers.

I generally separate what I'm freezing into single portions so you don't have to thaw out what you're not going to use. I also buy those 12 piece fried chicken "meals to go" at the grocery store and freeze what I'm not going to eat right away. Then all I have to do for a quick meal later is microwave a piece or two and then throw it in the toaster oven to finish heating up...comes out nice and crunchy.

Perducci: MPOM: Perducci: Imagine if people actually appreciated food.

I thought evolution took care of that for us:

1. Does it keep me from dying of starvation
2. Is it pleasurable to consume

So we should withhold medical care from people whose eating habits have caused (or contributed to the effects of) heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes, asthma, general fatso-ism, and other problems?
Unfortunately, evolution doesn't work very well anymore.


What the does what I wrote, or what YOU wrote, have to do with anyone's opinion on withholding medical care? Where on earth did that come from? After griping about artifical foods, you asked a trite question: "Golly, what if people APPRECIATED food?" What the fark does that mean? People eat for two reasons: the biological necessity to eat, and the desire to consume food that tastes pleasurable when fulfilling that biological necessity. That has virtually nothing to do with "appreciating" food more because it is wholesome and perfectly healthy and lacks additives or preservatives or artifical colorings or flavors or pieces of insect leg.

srewolf: I generally separate what I'm freezing into single portions so you don't have to thaw out what you're not going to use. I also buy those 12 piece fried chicken "meals to go" at the grocery store and freeze what I'm not going to eat right away. Then all I have to do for a quick meal later is microwave a piece or two and then throw it in the toaster oven to finish heating up...comes out nice and crunchy.

try buying some luncheon meat ham and freezing portions. pre-cooked ham is great for a lot of small meals- omelettes, toasties (bread with stuff and cheese under the broiler or in the microwave), small casseroles.

am I the only one that thinks thawing food out is a pain in the ass?

unrelated, but I've always noticed that water seems to be something other countries and tribes fight over, yet we are so wasteful and lazy that we choose to send large amounts of it through narrow tubes just to 'wash' things with instead of scrubbing.

MBZ321: I see first hand all of this as I work at one. Apples with a spot on them will get tossed...any fruit/veggie that has a blemish on it is usually tossed, this equals several boxes of food a day. Then theres the pizza and all the other prepared stuff that goes bad (you would think they would make less or lower the price to sell more, but nope..I constantly see stuff being tossed). The only thing they donate is bread and stuff, and even that isn't constantly done.

You and sboyle should save your money up and open up a grocery store. With all the money they throw away and how terrible their business models are, you should able to put them right out of business and retire in a few years. People will flock to your stores to buy bruised vegetables, stale bread, and thrice baked 4 hour old pizza.

I would place my life savings that the majority of decisions made by a business in a competitive industry that result in them throwing something out are monetarily sound. Which means you can blame the customers for their demand, or you can blame the suppliers for their low food prices, or maybe you can even blame god for giving us such great farming, but you can't blame the grocery store.